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Owner library
Short-term rental glossary
41 terms owners meet in performance reports and management agreements, defined in plain language with the formula behind each one where a real formula exists.
Revenue · 8
ADRAverage Daily Rate
Average Daily Rate is the average price paid per booked night over a period. It is calculated from room revenue divided by the number of nights actually sold, so it describes the rate guests paid rather than the rate advertised, and it ignores nights that stayed empty.
RevPARRevenue Per Available Room
Revenue Per Available Room measures revenue earned for every night the property was available to book, whether or not it sold. It combines rate and occupancy into one figure, which makes it the standard way to compare performance between periods, properties or markets.
RevPANRevenue Per Available Night
Revenue Per Available Night is the short-term rental equivalent of RevPAR, applied to a whole property rather than a hotel room. It divides total booking revenue by every night the property was available in the period, including nights blocked for maintenance only if they were bookable.
Occupancy rate
Occupancy rate is the share of available nights that were booked in a period, expressed as a percentage. Nights the owner blocked for personal use are normally excluded from the available count, so the figure reflects commercial performance rather than calendar availability.
Gap night
A gap night is an unsold night sitting between two confirmed bookings. It is usually created by minimum-stay rules that prevent a guest from booking the short window, rather than by an absence of demand for that date.
Orphan night
An orphan night is a single unsold night, or a very short unsold window, isolated by surrounding bookings and by minimum-stay settings. It is a specific form of gap night where the remaining window is shorter than the listing will accept.
Revenue management
Revenue management is the discipline of selling the right night, at the right price, through the right channel, to maximise total income over a period. It combines pricing, stay restrictions, channel strategy and forecasting rather than treating rate alone.
Occupancy gap
The occupancy gap is the difference between a property's occupancy and the realistic benchmark for comparable properties in the same market and season, expressed in nights or as a percentage of available nights.
Pricing · 9
Dynamic pricing
Dynamic pricing is the practice of changing nightly rates continuously in response to demand signals: local occupancy, competitor rates, events, day of week, seasonality and how far ahead the booking falls. Rates are recalculated regularly rather than fixed at the start of a season.
Base price
The base price is the reference nightly rate a pricing system adjusts up or down from. It represents what the property should earn on an ordinary night in ordinary demand, and it anchors every seasonal, weekend, event and last-minute adjustment applied afterwards.
Minimum stay
Minimum stay is the shortest number of nights a guest may book. It can be set globally or varied by date, so peak weekends carry longer minimums and quiet midweek periods carry shorter ones. It shapes both the volume and the profile of bookings received.
Length-of-stay discount
A length-of-stay discount reduces the effective nightly rate when a guest books beyond a threshold, typically weekly or monthly. The discount trades headline rate for guaranteed occupancy and fewer turnovers across the booked period.
Booking window
The booking window is the spread of time between when guests reserve and when they arrive, measured across all bookings for a property or market. It is usually described as a distribution rather than a single number, because leisure and business guests book on different horizons.
Lead time
Lead time is the number of days between the moment a specific booking is made and the guest's arrival date. Where the booking window describes a whole pattern, lead time describes one reservation within it.
Compression night
A compression night is a date when city-wide accommodation supply is close to sold out, usually because of a major event, conference, holiday or festival. Prices across the whole market rise sharply as remaining inventory becomes scarce.
Seasonality
Seasonality is the repeating annual pattern of demand in a market, driven by climate, school holidays, religious calendars, events and travel habits. It determines which months command premium rates, which sustain steady occupancy and which need active demand generation.
Shoulder season
Shoulder season is the transitional period between a market's peak and its low season. Demand is moderate, competition for guests increases and pricing decisions have more effect on occupancy than they do during either extreme.
Distribution · 7
Channel manager
A channel manager is software that synchronises availability, rates and bookings across multiple booking platforms from one place. When a night sells on one channel, it is closed on the others automatically, which prevents the same night being sold twice.
OTAOnline Travel Agency
An Online Travel Agency is a third-party platform that markets accommodation and takes bookings on the host's behalf in exchange for commission. Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo and Expedia are the largest in the short-term rental category.
Direct booking
A direct booking is a reservation made through the owner's or manager's own website or channels, without an intermediary platform. No platform commission is charged, and the guest's contact details belong to the operator.
Channel mix
Channel mix is the distribution of a property's bookings across the platforms that produced them, usually expressed as a percentage share of nights or revenue per channel, including direct bookings.
Listing optimisation
Listing optimisation is the systematic improvement of a property's public listing — photography, title, description, amenity data, house rules and settings — to increase both how often it appears in platform search and how often viewers book it.
Search ranking
Search ranking is where a listing appears in a booking platform's results for a given set of guest filters. Platforms rank on a mix of relevance, price competitiveness, reviews, response behaviour, cancellation history and recent booking performance.
Conversion rate
Conversion rate is the share of listing views that become bookings over a period. It measures how persuasive the listing is once a guest has found it, independent of how much traffic the platform sends.
Operations · 8
PMSProperty Management System
A Property Management System is the central software record of a property's reservations, guests, housekeeping tasks, payments and messaging. It is the operational system of record, with channel managers and pricing tools connected to it.
Review score
Review score is the average guest rating a listing carries on a platform, usually made up of sub-scores for cleanliness, accuracy, communication, check-in, location and value. Platforms weight recent reviews more heavily than old ones.
Superhost
Superhost is Airbnb's recognition programme for hosts who meet thresholds for rating, response rate, cancellation rate and completed stays, assessed periodically. Equivalent badges exist on other platforms under different names.
Guest vetting
Guest vetting is the screening applied before a reservation is confirmed: verifying identity, reviewing previous host feedback, checking the stated purpose and group size, and applying house rules consistently across every channel.
Self check-in
Self check-in lets guests enter without meeting anyone, using a smart lock, keypad or key safe, with access details issued shortly before arrival. Access codes are normally unique to each stay and expire at checkout.
Turnover
Turnover is the full process of preparing a property between one guest's departure and the next arrival: cleaning, linen change, restocking consumables, inspection and reporting any damage or maintenance need.
Cleaning fee
A cleaning fee is a one-off charge added to a reservation to cover turnover cost. It is charged per stay rather than per night, so its effect on the total price a guest sees is largest on short bookings.
Co-hosting
Co-hosting is an arrangement where a second party manages some or all of a listing's day-to-day operation on the owner's behalf — messaging, pricing, cleaning coordination — while the listing and the account remain the owner's.
Investment · 9
Management fee
A management fee is what an operator charges to run a property, usually as a percentage of booking revenue, sometimes as a fixed monthly amount. What the fee includes — and what is billed separately — varies widely between operators.
Gross booking valueGBV
Gross booking value is the total amount guests paid for confirmed stays in a period, before platform commission, management fees, cleaning costs, taxes and any other deduction. It is the top line of a property's performance.
Net operating incomeNOI
Net operating income is the revenue a property generates after operating expenses but before mortgage payments, depreciation and income tax. Operating expenses include management, cleaning, utilities, insurance, supplies and routine maintenance.
Cap rateCapitalisation rate
Cap rate expresses a property's annual net operating income as a percentage of its value or purchase price. It allows investors to compare the income return of different assets independently of how each purchase was financed.
Rental yield
Rental yield is annual rental income as a percentage of property value. Gross yield uses income before costs; net yield uses income after operating expenses and is the more meaningful figure for comparing investments.
STR vs LTRShort-term versus long-term rental
STR versus LTR is the comparison between letting a property to short-staying guests and letting it to a tenant on a long lease. Short-term letting typically produces higher gross income with higher costs, more variability and more regulation; long-term letting produces lower, steadier income.
Mid-term rental
A mid-term rental is a furnished let of roughly one to eleven months, sitting between nightly stays and a conventional tenancy. Typical guests are relocating staff, project workers, medical professionals and people between homes.
Aparthotel
An aparthotel is a building of self-contained apartments operated with hotel-style services such as reception, housekeeping and on-site staff. Units have kitchens and are booked nightly or for longer stays, under a single operator.
Serviced apartment
A serviced apartment is a fully furnished private apartment let with services included, typically weekly housekeeping, linen, utilities and support. It is aimed at stays of a week or more rather than at weekend leisure travel.
Put the terms to work
Every definition links to the management discipline it belongs to. If you would rather see the numbers for your own property, start with the revenue estimate.